Diary of an Oxygen Thief

“I liked hurting girls […] The thing is, I got off on it. I really enjoyed it. It’s like when you hear serial killers say they feel no regret, no remorse for all the people they killed. I was like that.” 

One of the very first things the narrator speaks about is his love for causing other people, specifically women, severe emotional trauma. It is one of the few things that he speaks passionately about, as he does not particularly care about his profession or seem to have any other pastimes. Rather, the narrator lives for emotional distress, both that which he inflicts upon other people and that which is inflicted upon himself, via Aisling. The narrator is almost overwhelmingly numb to the reality that surrounds him, except where pain is concerned. He is obsessed with pain but recognizes his own mortality and so refrains from attempting to inflict this pain upon other men because the results could be potentially fatal. In this way, he seems to be very similar to the serial killers he relates himself to, suggesting that if he perhaps had a more traumatic childhood, as most serial killers do, he would have become one. As it stands now, however, he merely revels in pain in order to prove to himself, it would seem, that he is still alive.